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A Cruel and Playful World of Clay Loved by Miuccia Prada

By

Clemens Bomsdorf

Apr 18, 2014 4:00 pm ET

KKV

With kittenish and brutal videos the young Swedish artist couple Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg won the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale and the interest of Miuccia Prada. Now solo shows at ICA in Boston and Kunstverein in Cologne allow an insight into their ambiguous work. Parts of the latter one will be on view in New York later this year.

At first sight Djurberg’s videos could well all be screened at a TV channel for kids. Dolls made of clay are the main characters. Seemingly happy they move in stop-motion, but “the debasements and distortions of Djurberg’s universe reveal themselves to have a more literal, mimetic relationship to the world than one might like to think” as critic Christopher Bedford put it in Artforum.